Hollandsche Schouwburg

The Hollandsche Schouwburg was built in 1892 in Amsterdam's Plantage district. It was a popular theatre, putting on many well-known Dutch plays. A large number of Jews lived in the Plantage district and not surprisingly the theatre had a sizeable Jewish public. In 1941 the Nazi occupiers changed the theatre's name into Joodsche Schouwburg (Jewish Theatre). After that, only Jewish actors and artists were allowed to perform there for a strictly Jewish audience. Between August 1942 and November 1943 the Hollandsche Schouwburg was used by the Nazis as a deportation centre. Jews from Amsterdam and surrounding districts were obliged to report there before being deported. Most of them were brought to the theatre by force. Hours, days, sometimes weeks they waited, prisoners cut off from the outside world. Then they were transported to the Dutch transit camps in Westerbork or Vught. These were the last stops before they were herded into trains bound for one of the extermination camps. After World War II had ended, many years passed before the building was allocated a suitable purpose and it was in a very poor state. It wasn't until 1962 that the city council of Amsterdam placed a monument here in remembrance of the Jewish victims of the Nazi terror and those years of unspeakable suffering. Long neglect had made it impossible to restore the original theatre building, so the auditorium and stage were taken down. What emerged was an almost empty space and here an obelisk was erected, whose base was a Star of David. The walls around the former stage wings remained partially standing, enclosing the obelisk. Beside the entrance on the left, a memorial chapel was installed, with an eternal flame in the centre of the floor. On the wall are listed the 6,700 family names of the 104,000 Jews from the Netherlands who were murdered in the war. In 1992 the Jewish Historical Museum and the Hollandsche Schouwburg came under the same management.